"What we wanted to determine is whether they also use their vision to control flight speed, or rely on some other senses to get their forward speed," Baird says.

The team manipulated the bees' visual environment to test the theory.

First they trained the bees to fly through a straight rectangular tunnel. Then they moved the side walls of the tunnel to create patterns that either went in the same direction as the bees were flying or against them.

"We were able to manipulate how fast the bees thought their visual environment was moving, regardless of how fast they were actually flying," Baird says.

"For example, we could fool them into thinking they were going slower than they really were just by altering the pattern of the [flight path]."

What the researchers found is that the bees automatically adjusted their flight speed to keep their surrounding environment at a constant.

"It's such a simple mechanism, and yet it's so effective. These bees don't need to know where they are in the world, how high above the ground they are, or what thrust they have.

"All they have to do is to look at how fast the ground, or sides of their environment are moving past them, and keep that at a constant rate.

"So in an open environment, such as a field, bees will fly high and fast and maximise their efficiency. But as soon as they come into a cluttered environment, they'll automatically slow down to avoid crashing into objects."